Apple’s iMac personal computer has been a huge success so far for the company. By incorporating Intel processors, and having the capability to run Windows operating system, Apple has achieved a near perfect blend of functionality, versatility and let’s not forget, high style (after all, it is still an Apple).

PC Magazine is reporting that Apple is about to update the popular line, rolling out several new versions of the iMac featuring Intel Core 2 Duo processors, and standard 2 GB onboard memory. The new iMacs will also feature the most advanced graphics card available so far in the line, with NVIDEA GeForce 8800 GS graphics, which will be available on some models.

With a beginning price around $1200, the new iMacs boast a 24 inch high-definition screen, and a variety of innovative features including built-in WiFi, Bluetooth and Ethernet support. In addition, the new iMacs will include USB 2.0 support, both FireWire 400 and 800 ports, and the built-in Apple iSight video camera.

The all-in-one design of the iMac has been incredibly popular. As well as taking up less space at home or in the office, the sleek aluminum and glass design of the iMac is as beautiful as it is functional. The minimalist, Scandinavian-like design of the iMac also makes it easy to move around.

Moving a Windows PC from your home office into the living room can be a cumbersome affair, with lots of chords to detach and reattach, and extra peripherals to move and plug-in. But moving an iMac from one room to another is a simple as unplugging it — carrying it to its new location — and simply plugging it back in.

This simplicity is one of the most attractive features of the iMac, and it is helping Apple win over new users at an astonishing rate. And there is also the widespread perception that Apple computers are more reliable than Windows PCs, and that Macs are not nearly as likely to be vulnerable to computer viruses, spyware and other malicious software.

Theoretically, Macs — including the iMac — can be infected with computer viruses and other malware. In reality though, it is extremely rare for a Mac user to experience this issue, as there are very few computer viruses designed to infect the Mac operating system. The same is true of Trojans, spyware and other Web “nasties.” It’s not that a Mac computer is impervious to these things — but simply that there aren’t very many of them that target the Mac operating system.

All of these benefits, combined with Apple’s ongoing research and development, suggest that the company will continue to gain market share over Microsoft. The new and more powerful iMacs are definitely a step in the right direction, and are sure to help Apple to keep the pressure on Microsoft.

DVD copying is not as easy as duplicating CDs, where you can drag and drop files to the CD drive containing the blank disk and just wait for the computer to do the copying. Of course, copying CDs is frowned upon in the copyright laws in many countries but for some purposes, it is perfectly legal to duplicate copyrighted works. The same applies to DVD copying: you may make copies for some specific purposes. Aside from possible copyright law violation, you also need to consider other issues in DVD duplication: encryption, encoding options, software to use and recording media.

Let’s first take a brief look on the legality of DVD copying. If you only want to make back-up copies of your entire movie collection, that is fine. But if you make copies which you intend to sell or even give away, you will be violating copyright laws. This is because in order to duplicate a DVD, you would have to circumvent protection technology incorporated in the disk and circumventing such protection is against the law.

DVD movie disks are protected with the Content Scrambling System (CSS) developed and adopted by the Hollywood studios. The protection encrypts the data on a DVD and requires a special key for decryption. Software developers of DVD player manufacturers receive the decryption key from the studios so their software can read the information. But the protection has proven to be vulnerable and easy to overcome. Defeating this protection scheme, an act called ripping, means removing the CSS protection and getting the movies to play, say on a PC hard drive. There are numerous software available that can remove the protection and let you rip DVDs, but you must keep in mind that it may be against the law in your country to do so.

The second thing you must consider is the size of the DVD files. Movies usually exceed the maximum capacity of available DVD recordable media: DVD 9 movies can contain up to 9 gigabytes of data but recordable disks are DVD 5, which means that it can only contain up to 5 gigabytes data (or much less actually). Thus, you will have to decide what to do with the file: remove non-essential data, compress the file or split it into several DVDs. There are software available that let you select which parts of the movie to copy, shrink the file to a much smaller size with hardly noticeable difference, or split it into several disks. The last option is not commonly done because it means changing disks and hence, interruptions in movie viewing. You may choose one or combine any of these options to be able to duplicate a DVD.

The third thing is selecting the software application for the DVD ripping. As earlier stated, there are numerous programs available that offers varied features and options to copy DVD files. Some applications just allow you to select what parts of the movies to copy and others offer different compression technologies to shrink the movie file while others just let you split them up. If you will purchase an application, choose one that provides a combination of the techniques to give you more flexibility and power to get what you wanted.

After ripping the movie file, you may want to burn this into another DVD disk. Most of the ripping applications usually include DVD-burning capabilities so you won’t need another program for this. However, you need to select what type of media will you burn the movie into: plain recordable DVDs or rewriteable DVDs. This is important because some DVD players won’t be able to read DVD-RW disks, so you must check the compatibility of your player to the media you will use.

The internet has many resources that provide guides and advice on the best applications for DVD ripping and burning. You must look at these and choose for yourself which one to purchase keeping in mind the important factors listed above.

Several petitions are going around online for Microsoft to continue selling and supporting Windows XP. One petition, hosted at InfoWorld.com, reportedly has more than 10,000 signatures so far, and there are many others located on blogs and sites all across the Web.

Windows users claim that XP is the most stable operating system ever developed by Microsoft, and even though XP is now six years old, many PC users cannot bring themselves to “upgrade” to Windows Vista. The problem is, Microsoft is planning to pull Windows XP off store shelves in June of this year. Microsoft boasts that Windows Vista is a superior operating system, and the time is right for all Windows users to begin upgrading.

Unfortunately for Microsoft, most windows XP users don’t agree with this sentiment. Microsoft’s Vista operating system received only lukewarm — or in some cases, downright hostile — reviews, and is generally regarded as being less intuitive, slower and with more bothersome security pop-ups then Windows XP.

There is also the question of incompatibility with certain programs and hardware devices. Vista is still not compatible with as many printers, for example, as Windows XP. For all of these reasons and more, many businesses have refused to upgrade to Vista, citing lack of cost efficiency and compatibility problems with existing hardware.

Although Microsoft is aware of the petitions going around to extend the Windows XP deadline, so far the company is refusing to budge. A Microsoft statement quoted by the Associated Press indicated the company would continue to listen to customer feedback, but offered no further promise of extending XP.

As an operating system, Windows XP has now been around for over six years, which is practically a lifetime in the computer technology arena. But the problem with introducing a new operating system every two or three years is simply this: operating systems take time to mature, develop and become stable.

In this sense, computer operating systems are a lot like people. When they are young, they are flashy and new, but as they age they become more stable and compatible, with fewer nasty surprises. Windows XP, at six years old, has reached this maturity, and is now a relatively stable operating system, which gets the job done and offers few surprises in the form of compatibility problems or unknown bugs.

For these reasons, the computer industry probably needs to change its paradigm which says that “newer is always better.” When it comes to hardware, newer may indeed be better. But where software operating systems are concerned, that is not always the case. The lesson to be learned from Windows XP’s continued popularity is that a mature and stable operating system will beat out a flashy newcomer every single time.

Adobe is well-known as a success story in the world of software, so any new products by the company tend to be taken very seriously by IT experts. Having said that, the company has recently launched its new Adobe Media Player that works in conjunction with their new free online video site, Adobe TV, and so far the experts are less than impressed.

The Adobe Media Player version 1.0 is a cross-platform application compatible with Windows, Mac and Lenox operating systems, and is designed to be a user-friendly method of interacting with Adobe Flash content online. The software was originally announced last year, and expected to be available in the fourth quarter of 2007, but development delays pushed back the launch until now.

As far as functionality, Adobe claims the new Media Player will be similar to QuickTime or Windows Media Player, allowing users to watch video content stored on their computer, and supporting a variety of file types. Unfortunately, when compared to Apple’s QuickTime, or Windows Media Player, the new Adobe software doesn’t exactly cut the mustard.

In reality, the initial launch of the media player will only handle MPEG-4 files or the ubiquitous Adobe Flash Video format. And even though the player will allow you to import various other file types, once imported the player will simply inform you that there is a problem playing the video — with no further explanation. So much for the user-friendliness.

Adobe’s player does have its merits though. For example, as well as being able to play video files from your desktop, it can also play streaming media, providing separate channels for different types of content. Thankfully, several networks have made video content available for the Adobe Media Player, including Comedy Central, MTV, CBS and Nickelodeon, so there are some interesting short clips and even a few full episodes to watch.

For the time being though, video content is quite limited, though this situation may improve if Adobe can convince more networks and users to adopt its media player format.

Another bothersome aspect of the Adobe Media Player is that it will handle a variety of video resolutions, but playback results can be erratic, so depending on which network the content comes from you could have beautiful full-screen resolution, or a lame 1990s low resolution “video in a box.”

The media player currently does not offer any way to share videos with friends, even if they also have the Adobe Media Player installed. This is a fairly annoying quirk in the age of Web 2.0 social networking standards, and something Adobe could have easily designed into the software.

On a positive note, playback of streaming video is generally smooth, with few if any “buffering” pauses, even in full-screen mode. With time (and a few updates) the Adobe media player may eventually be a force to be reckoned with. For now though, it offers no threat whatsoever to Windows Media Player or QuickTime.

Before we start the tutorial, we assume you know a little bit about java, like what Java classes are, and how to create methods etc.

Prerequesites:

• You need a MySQL database that you can connect to.
• JDBC driver for java that can be found here: http://dev.mysql.com/usingmysql/java/
• Java SDK (1.5+) and a compiler.
• Include the JDBC driver in your project.

Required file(s):

• the database where this tutorial is based on (run the sql below to create one)
• Java class: MainTest.java (attached blow)
• Java class: ConnectToDatabase.java (attached below)

Recommended tools: Eclipse IDE, Java 1.5 or higher

So how do we make a connection to the MySQL database using Java?

To connect to a MySQL database (or any if that matters) you need to supply a username and password, so in ConnectToDatabase class, we created a method that takes 4 parameters such as a userName, userPassword, the database url and the sql query you want to execute.

This is the code in the method in the ConnectToDatabase class that will execute your queries:

  public void connect(String userName, String userPassword,
                           String databaseUrl, String userQuery)
  {
     try {
*       Class.forName ("com.mysql.jdbc.Driver").newInstance ();
*       Connection conn = DriverManager.getConnection (databaseUrl,
*                                  userName, userPassword);
*
*       Statement stat = conn.createStatement();
*       String query = userQuery;
*       ResultSet result = stat.executeQuery(query);

        System.out.println("Result(s): ");
#       while(result.next()){
#          System.out.println("Name:t" + result.getString("userName"));
#          System.out.println("Hobby:t" + result.getString("userHobby"));
#          System.out.println("");
#       }
        conn.close();
     }catch (SQLException e) {}
     catch (InstantiationException e) {}
     catch (IllegalAccessException e) {}
     catch (ClassNotFoundException e) {}
  }

Basically what this does is making the actual connection to the database and shows the result(s) on the screen.
(*) this part of the code creates the new “com.mysql.jdbc.Driver” instance and executes the query.
(#) in this loop the result(s) will be shown. If there are no results nothing will be displayed.

So how does my ConnectToDatabase class know where to connect and what query to perform? Well, the answer is simple. There is another class (MainTest class) that handles that. So now I’ll explain what the MainTest class does.

The code in the main class from the class “MainTest” looks like this:

  ConnectToDatabase CTD = new ConnectToDatabase();
  CTD.connect(userName, userPassword, databaseUrl, userQuery);

The first line is to make an instance of the ConnectToDatabase class created especially for this tutorial. Then in the second line, we call the connect method from ConnectToDatabase and pass the arguments we have in the main class to the public variables.

Let’s say we try to login with something like this:

  static String userName = "root";
  static String userPassword = "";
  static String databaseUrl =
      "jdbc:mysql://localhost:3306/EngineeringserverDotComTest";
  static String userQuery = "select * from info";

Compile the MainTest and ConnectToDatabase classes and make sure your settings are correct. If everything is correct you should see some result(s). That’s it, I hope you enjoyed this tutorial.

Download the sample codes:

• ConnectToDatabase.java
• MainTest.java